The present invention relates to an enriched nutritious food product comprising a powder of ginseng used as raw materials for a herb medicine and a method for producing the powder of ginseng. More specifically, besides Panax schinseng, such ginseng includes Panax japonicus, Panax quinquefolium and Acanthopanax senticosus containing medicinal effective ingredients similar thereto.
For example, the ginseng to be used for the herb medicine and the enriched nutritious food product is a perennial plant of Alaliacea family having the botanical name of Panax schinseng, which is distributed over a region from the northeastern district of China to Korea and cultivated also in Japan, namely in Shimane prefecture and so on.
The botanical name of "Panax" means the complete healing, namely a cure-all and originates in the PAN (all) and the AKOS (healing) of Greek. This ginseng is effective as the herb medicine for additionally filling up spirits of the main entrails of the liver, the heart, the spleen, the lugs and the kidney.
As substitutes for this ginseng there has been provided Panax japonicaus, Panax quinquefolium or Acanthopanax senticosus of similar kind having the same medicinal effects.
A main ingredient of the ginseng is saponin. As the saponin included in this ginseng there have been known twelve kinds of ginsenside-Ro, -Ra, -Rb1, -Rb2, -Rc, -Rd, -Re, -Rf, -Rg1, -Rg2, -Rg3, -Rh. These are the one (ginsenside-Rb1, -Rb2, -Rc) containing sapogenen and protopanaxadiol, and the one (ginsenside-Re, Rf, -Rg1, -Rg2) containing sapogenen and protopanaxatriol. The main saponin in the crude drug is ginsenside-Rb1, -Rb2, -Rc, -Rg1. The ginsenside-Ro is the same as chikusetsusaponin V, and the ginsenside-Rb1 is the same as saponin D.
Besides those, the ginseng contains essential oil of 0.05%, .beta.-elemene, panacene (C.sub.15 H.sub.24) and panaxynol as polyacetylene compound and further contains choline, vitamin B complex, fatty acid and so on.
Since owing to the above-mentioned ingredients the ginseng provides both sedation for body and mind disease and the likes and normalizing effect for metabolism, it is typical of robustness type enriched nutritious food products and herb medicines.
In that way, the ginseng has been highly esteemed as valuable drugs since ancient times and there were conventionally following two methods for preparing raw materials to be used for enriched nutritious food products and herb medicines.
According to the first method, raw ginsengs harvested from fields are washed and then dried by the sun or heating as they are or after having been put through the hot water. According to the second method, raw ginsengs are washed, steamed at temperatures below 130.degree. C. and then dried by heating at 70.degree. C.
Both those preparation methods are used in Japanese markets, and ginseng drugs containing sufficient amount of the above-mentioned ingredients are judged good in quality even though they are prepared in either method.
Then, the ginseng extract is obtained from those prepared raw ginsengs by means of alcohol- or water-extracting method. The ginseng extract is used as it is or in granular state for enriched nutritious food products and herb medicines such as various kinds of drink drugs, tablet drugs or teas.
However, according to either conventional method for preparing such raw material, since the ginseng is to be heated at temperatures above 40.degree. C. at the time of heating or drying, disadvantageously a portion of the saponin of the main ingredient is destroyed.
Further, since the ginseng extract is obtained by extracting only the saponin group, part of the ingredient obtained from the partially destroyed prepared raw material, the extract is lack of useful ingredients inherent to ginseng. Especially other effective ingredients except the saponin ingredients are not utilized effectively at all so far.
That is, conventional, so-called ginseng products have come off largely from the effective ingredients of the raw ginseng harvested from fields.
Accordingly, in view of the above-mentioned problems desired is a high-quality ginseng raw material suitable for various applications to present enriched nutritious food products and herb medicines.